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SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) was proposed in 2010 for a five-year M-class mission in the context of ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets located at several AUs (0.5-10 AU) from nearby stars (<25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses down to super-Earths (~2 Earth radii, ~10 M⊕), possibly habitable. In addition, circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System can be studied. SPICES is based on a 1.5-m off-axis telescope and can perform spectro-polarimetric measurements in the visible (450 - 900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40. This paper summarizes the top science program and the choices made to conceive the instrument. The performance is illustrated for a few emblematic cases.

Many planets have been detected so far but very few around nearby stars that could allow characterization of their atmosphere thanks to their proximity. There are known exoplanets around less than 8.3% of the FGK stars of the Solar neighborhood (d<20 pc) and the vast majority of them are giant planets. Within the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan, the scientific goal of the NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is to detect and characterize planetary systems around these nearby stars in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth-mass in the habitable zone. This survey would provide the actual planetary masses, the full characterization of the orbits including their inclination, for all the components of the planetary system down to the Earth-mass limit. NEAT will continue the work performed by Hipparcos and Gaia by reaching a precision that is improved by two orders of magnitude on pointed targets compared to Gaia. We present the free-flyer concept that has been submitted to the 2010 ESA call for M3 missions with two satellites flying in formation 40m apart.

Submillimetre (submm) astronomy is the prime technique to unveil the birth and early evolution of a broad range of astrophysical objects. It is a relatively new branch of observational astrophysics which focuses on studies of the cold Universe, i.e., objects radiating a significant – if not dominant – fraction of their energy at wavelengths ranging from ∼ 100 μm to ∼ 1 mm. Submm continuum observations are particularly powerful to measure the luminosities, temperatures and masses of cold dust emitting objects. Examples of such objects include star-forming clouds in our Galaxy, prestellar cores and deeply embedded protostars, protoplanetary disks around young stars, as well as nearby starburst galaxies and dust-enshrouded high-redshift galaxies in the early Universe.

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